Are you thoroughly using BYCEPS, PISORF, and the bear mace for the boss? Also, make sure you use remaining tiles to whittle his resistances with BYCEPS. Also, if you have even basic preps you should have the slayer wand. It's great. With it you can take out whatever mini boss gives you trouble (although its best to save it if you can).

I just did it - took me 2 tries, and this particular challenge always gave me trouble before. I looked at the vid, and I can't even say what was different. Goblin.

And I'm not sure you can do it with non-goblins except possibly halflings. That is, without preps. With preps - different story. And you might have a point about gold challenges becoming available before players are ready for them, it's been brought up before but must've got lost in all the stuff that's being done. It's still a beta, you know.

With preps, I'm pretty sure I've done it with a non-goblin and in a different manner.

EDIT: But gold challenges are different from regular gameplay - they're more puzzles than dungeon runs, and since most of them don't cost a lot they sort of require you to figure out optimal solutions. They're nintendo-hard so to speak, most of them. I'm really curious about what you've been doing that you found boring, and I'm also curious how you managed to not unlock the goblins after 12 hours of play. I generaly unlock them in about an hour without even trying.

Man, it is such a relief to see someone who isn't in love with this game. I mean, I've been following it and reading the forms for a while, and I was starting to suspect that DD had some kind of evil mind control hidden in it to make us into unknowing slaves.

Now that someone dislikes it enough to want money returned, I know that isn't the case! Horay!

Now, if I can just find a way to prove that my mail man isn't stealing my garden tools I can finally let down my guard...

I've completed it with a Human before. Knockback is really important early on, so is using the cracked amulet as you start being slightly uncomfortable with higher level enemies. I'm pretty sure it's possible with Dwarf too, platemail stacks really well with the extra health.

-edit- Ah crud. you really shouldn't have been getting those popups after using glyphs via hotkey...

The self-contained aspect of the game is still there, it's just that there are now "end game" scenarios that require skill + in game resources to reliably beat. Part of the problem is the strange, open-ended pacing of the game. The VICIOUS dungeons and the Gold challenges are serious end game content, requiring you to know every trick in the book to complete. That's fine, but you can encounter these things very early in the game. I've sometimes thought that these parts of the game should be more clearly marked as "Do not even try until you have beaten Horatio."

Once you've reached a certain level of proficiency. I'd say the difficultly breaks down like this:

EASY: You can do this by reflexively clicking on any monster equal or less than your level. There is only one EASY dungeon, and some Bronze challenges are approximately EASY

NORMAL: Can be reliably beaten using any class/race combo with no preps, including poor combinations like gnome berserkers

HARD: Can be reliably beaten using any reasonable class/race combo with no preps, or by poor combinations with moderate preps

VICIOUS: A huge spike in difficultly, much greater than the gap between NORMAL and HARD. Almost another game entirely. VICIOUS content is intended to challenge skilled players that have all the toys and want to fight something where a totally prepped run is not overkill. VICIOUS can be reliably beaten by good race/class combos with moderate to heavy prepping. Sub-optimal load outs can work, but expect to lose more often than you win.

I have to disagree on the vicious. With good planning they can be beaten consistently with light preps for a good combo, or even purist. Then again, I have a rather off perspective, so I'll stop there.

Hmm... Where would you put silver and gold challenges on your scale. I'd say silver with hard and gold between hard and vicious, although the difficulties vary quite dramatically on some of these.

If you want to unlock the goblin: Look in the south. He's in a subdungeon and he asks for money. Pay him and exit the run. They should probably add quests for the goblin and the other race you haven't unlocked.